India and Europe - An Essay in Understanding

Wilhelm Halbfass

Suny Press

1988

604 páginas

20h 8m

ISBN-10: 0887067956

This book explores the intellectual encounter of India and the West from pre-Alexandrian antiquity until the present. It examines India's role in European philosophical thought, as well as the reception of European philosophy in Indian thought. Halbfass also considers the tension in India between a traditional and modern understanding of itself.

Halbfass covers a wide variety of epochs and "cultures" in this study without oversimplification and without distracting shifts of tone. The volume's methodological unity is reflected in Halbfass' reliance on the German hermeneutical tradition and his root characterization of the encounter between Indian and the West as dynamic. It is a contribution rooted in the interpretive tradition typified by the work of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas.

This edition is much more than a mere translation. Halbfass has not only translated, but has also revised, updated, and added much new material.

"Halbfass has written a book which is extremely interesting both for the general reader and for the specialist in Indian philosophy. The first will undoubtedly appreciate the effort made by the author to explain clearly problems and attitudes which are unfamiliar to the European philosophical tradition, whereas the second will learn much from the treatment of many aspects of Indian thought by a scholar who is equally at home in both European and Indian philosophy." -- Indo-Iranian Journal

"Halbfass' book is a gift to his Indologist colleagues. Due to its comprehensiveness, thoroughness, and clear delineation of the characteristic aspects of the encounter between Europe and India, it is a trusted work of reference. It has prepared the way for a protracted dialogue which should not be historically naive." -- Indian Theological Studies

Wilhelm Halbfass (1940–2000) was Professor of Indian Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought; On Being and What There Is: Classical Vaisesika and the History of Indian Ontology; and the editor of Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta.S